Inquiry Post #2

QUESTION: What is it about dystopian fiction that captivates young adult readers?

In order to move forward with answering my primary question about students finding cultural connection in these books, I realized that I need to step back first and find out what is so appealing about this specific genre in the first place.  This appears to be a genre that is read across the board, with male and female students all finding something that interests them in this genre.  Dystopian fiction seems to have boomed in the last several years.  As an avid reader in my young adult days, I do not recall having nearly as many books from this genre receiving such wide popularity.

So--I take a step back. Why are students so in to these books? Philip Reeve says the interest is obvious; that "stuck in those awkward years between childhood and full adulthood, bridling against the authority of parents and high school teachers, they [teenagers] can draw a bleak satisfaction from imagining adult society reduced to smoking rubble" (35).  While this might be true, I also want to suggest that it may not be the failure of adult society that draws them, but the notion that within these new societies, teens often have to exercise greater autonomy in order to survive.  My students might not have an accurate or realistic sense of what it means to be an adult, but they quite often talk about all the things they can be and do when they are "grown", so for me, the draw would be a sense of being "grown"  and having the control that comes with that feeling.  Further to this point of what this genre reflects in our students ways of thinking, Reeve makes a strong point regarding the lack of balance in the genre.  He makes the assertion that the genre has taken a turn for the decidedly negative and pessimistic with less of a projection of any futures that are not dark "blighted wastelands", that the balance of optimism in past novels may have been a factor in the way our world has grown in positive ways "because the children of earlier generations were excited by fictional visions of a brighter future and ended up as the scientists and social reformers, innovative engineers and hi-tech entrepreneurs who helped to make it happen (36). With all of this darkness, he asks the important question: "What sort of future awaits a society whose young people are taught that there's nothing to look forward to but decline and disaster, and that decline and disaster may be all that they deserve?" (36). This is an extremely important question that I will consider further as my research moves along. 

I am new to this genre, and I was looking for a resource of some popular titles--both new and old.  I came across this online forum in which several contributors offer suggestions of dystopian (or post-apocalyptic) fiction for young adult readers. I plan to sift through this forum and find a nice survey of books that may help me answer my questions with primary material.

Works Cited

Reeve, Philip. "The Worst is Yet to Come". School Library Journal 57.8 (August 2011): 34-36.